Hey guys, I wanted to show you what my friend 'Byte the dust' and I are up to these days with our savages. We set ourselves up with a small anodizing lab and are doing some interesting things. This is top quality industrial grade type II anodizing.

First we started with one basic color with some of Chronic's TVPs.



The blackish effect you see is the pixels being compressed into a smaller pic, if you save it and enlarge it you will see them the way they really look.

The skid, we took this one in the sun to get all the details to show.



Then we started to experiment a little and came up with what we like to call the "bloody TVPs" as if the truck killed someone and got splattered in blood at high speed.







The skid again with the engine plate and cross braces done in black.



The bloody savage.







Next we started to toy with some camo patterns and colors, we still need to try out some different color schemes but so far we're pretty happy with the results.



And finally this is the scratch test to see how deep the color went, as you can see its a little more than surface deep.





If you guys have any ideas/suggestions please let us know, we'll try them out and post the results. At this point the only limit is our imagination.

So what do you think?

tjhats pretty sweet, it makes the truck stand out alot.

NICE work..... I see you guys making some money in the near future...[sm=punching.gif]

Looking good man, I'll have to get something done.

-Josh-

Yeah for sure, PM me .

This is my first time to even see this thread, but excellent work!

I am at a total loss as to how color is added to alum by way of anodizing it. All I know is the word "anodize" comes from anode (negative end) versus cathode (positive end). This of course means elctricity is involved. To anodize the part, do you run a current from one end of it and apply the anode-affinite dye to the other end?

How is it done and how can the average RC fan like me do it at home? I have a moderate degree of skill in art and would love to try my hand at coloring by anodizing some parts!

Man those bloody TVPs look awesome! Nice job! Might have to PM you sometime

Hey Savagejim.

Actually you're not that loss.

The process involves placing aluminum in an electrolyte, weak sulfuric acid, and passing a low voltage current through it. The aluminum part is connected to the positive (anode) side and the negative side is connected to a cathode made of lead. This causes the aluminum to oxidize, similar to steel rusting, with the net result of a very hard, tough abrasion resistant protective coating being formed. An interesting 'quirk' of this process is that the film formed looks like honeycomb, and has 'tubes' growing up from the aluminum. These tubes conveniently allow color dyes to flow into them.

Now if you want to go for home-made be ready to have some mistakes, but you may learn from them.

Oc.

Octavio and Chris... the anodizing is coming along nicely!

I was thinking the other day that I should be able to laser etch graphics and such onto the parts after the anodizing is done,that would look sweet. Ever since I first saw those bloody TVPs I've been thinking about the colors I want you to use on mine. I've got those flames cut into the TVPs, so I was thinking about doing them in a single color and buffing the flames back to bare aluminum. I want the skid and engine plate in that grayish color that Team Losi uses on all of their hard anodized parts.

Here's a pic of the color, and this part appears to have been laser etched like I was talking about.

We'll be in touch with you soon about the details Chronic, sounds like its going to look really sweet. We need to get that color.

We have some scrap savage 25 TVPs lying around and did one up in camo. Theres a few mistakes but we've learnt from it and know how to avoid it in the future. Personally i like it better than the first attempt at camo, the colors are just right IMO.

Love the bloody tvps man looks awsome. Only problem with annodizing is it only adds about .002 to .005" to the overall thickness meaning it gets worn away rather quickly, but thats not really a big deal if you anno them yourelves. and since tvps arent hitting the ground like a pan chassis or skid plate it should last quite a while.

How do you do the multi color splatter ones I know how 2 tone and single color ones are done, but the splattering effect aludes me probably because Ive never even bothered to read up about it though .

The camo on the little sample above this one, with the brown and two shades of green would look awesome, I think.

The Bloody TVP's are my favorite too. In fact they were the first attempt for two colors.

This kind of anodize gets 1 mills of thickness and the dye (color) goes no more deep then .7 mills. of course I could go thicker but for this purpose there is no need.

1 Mills = 25.4 Microns = 0.000999 Inch. The screws wont even notice.

Thanks! I should have known that: anode=positive for anion ("not ionic" therefore not a negative charge) and cathode=negative for cation (therefore negative charge).

When you say weak sufuric acid, do you mean liquids like used in auto batteries? If so, what is the proper manner to dilute it for this use? How much current must be run through this system for oxidation to occur?

i hate this place. chronics tvps, which i want, now this anodizing, which i want and then chronic is going to lazer some designs in, which i want and there are people who paint really good shells, i want one of thoese too. i have exactly no money. STOP TEASING ME!

LOL. You sound like I did not too long ago...

yup what a tease. i want a set of chronics tvps with the bloody anodizing.

ya, ill take one too, they're free right? LoL, jk

I believe if you're using battery acid, you mix it 50/50 with water...and I believe it must be distilled water...am I correct?

i thought the powder coating colors were a powder that turn into a paint and get baked on??
also does the metals have to be plain ? or can they be powder coated over?
you guys should stick with custom painted TVP's for the savage, those are awesome and if you keep it up you can get very good! and start to make a profit, mabe even some day you can cut your own custom TVP's? and paint them, you can mnake the longer chasis and include the longer dogbones, guys anything is possible!!

Hey traxxas_man

What we are doing is not powder coat. But you are right about how the powder coating is done. Powder coating is the technique of applying dry paint to a part. The final cured coating is the same as a 2-pack wet paint. In normal wet painting such as house paints, the solids are in suspension in a liquid carrier, which must evaporate before the solid paint coating is produced.

In powder coating, the powdered paint may be applied by either of two techniques.

1) The item is lowered into a fluidized bed of the powder, which may or may not be electro statically charged, or
2) The powdered paint is electro statically charged and sprayed onto the part.

The part is then placed in an oven and the powder particles melt and coalesce to form a continuous film.

This makes a thick coating that would look nice, but would make parts that have been machined for precision fitting unable to fit together.

What we do is anodizing where we basically open the pores of the alu to let the colors sink in. It does add a very tiny amount of material but not enough to make a difference. If you could remove just this extra material on say a set of TVPs and hold it in your hand you wouldn't even feel the weight and probably have a hard time seeing it.

Thanks for the words of encouragement though! If ever you want something done please drop me a PM.

I've been watching the thread since it first started...but just now read all the posts again to find *I* hadn't said anything about how awesome the work is. It's indeed, awesome work.

-Ziggy

.001 thick is a pretty thin coat of anodize. I work at a machine shop and when we make parts for customers we have to take into affect how much anodizing they put on its usually .001 -.002 per side, but this could be industrial grade hard annodizing. I think hard anodizing is actually harder then the aluminum its used to coat which is nice since you get the lightness of aluminum, but a bit tougher shell. now if you really want a wear resistant surface you could titanium nitride coat it i think its like 50 rockwell hardness.

You are right. TYPE II anodizing is 1Mils = .001 inch max., thicker than .001 is going to be "Hard anodizing" the only problem with hard anodizing is that the part will turn darker and the dye will not get into the cells. I'm able to build a thicker layer but the results of color resistance are going to be the same, because the dye wont go further then .7 mils = .0007 inch, besides, hard anodize process is more dificult to handle and requires more time in the bath (more cost). From what i know and my experince no one of the pieces with color are hard anodize exept for black, dark grey (almost black) and dark green.

Oc.

Type III (hard anodizing), can reach thicknesses of .002 inch. Hard anodizing is only used for black and dark green due to denser pore size. It's also harder to do at home because it requires colder acid temp. and higher current density.

I learned this a while back from a web page I read...you might still be able to find it.
-Ziggy